Vamps: Deadly Dreamgirls

Rating

Director

Mark Burchett, Michael D. Fox

Screenplay

Mark Burchett, Michael D. Fox

Length

1h 30m

Starring

Jennifer Huss, Paul Morris, Jenny Wallace, Amber Newman, Stacey Sparks, Charles Cooper, Rob Calvert, Tamika Hoffman, Susan Foreman, Ed Belarski, Ozell Large, Sean Nielsen

MPAA Rating

R

Review

PREFACE:
In the early 2000s, I was writing reviews for an outfit called Apollo Guide Reviews. That website has since been closed down.

Attempting to reconstruct those reviews has been an exercise in frustration. Having sent them to Apollo Guide via email on a server I no longer have access to (and which probably doesn’t have records going back that far), my only option was to dig through The Wayback Machine to see if I could find them there. Unfortunately, while I found a number of reviews, a handful of them have disappeared into the ether. At this point, almost two decades later, it is rather unlikely that I will find them again.

Luckily, I was able to locate my original review of this particular film. Please note that I was not doing my own editing at the time, Apollo Guide was. As such, there may be more than your standard number of grammatical and spelling errors in this review. In an attempt to preserve what my style had been like back then, I am not re-editing these reviews, which are presented as-is.

REVIEW:
From the title alone, images of needless sex permeate the imagination. Vamps: Deadly Dreamgirls doesn’t disappoint – at least, not in that department. From beginning to end, this is a film with too little heart and too much bite.

The film takes place at Vamps, a seedy strip club where the proprietors are vampires. The first night of the story, a rather obnoxious man hits upon the bar’s owner, Tasha (Jenny Wallace), and ends up sucked dry in a pathetic sexual encounter with the dominatrix of the group, Randi (Amber Newman). The third vampiress is the unimportant and overly nice Tabitha (Stacey Sparks), another forgettable face at the club.

Heather (Jennifer Huss) is the new girl in town. After breaking up with her pathetic boyfriend, she finds herself in desperate need of cash and searches out a job as a stripper, because she’s heard that it pays great money. Tasha tries quickly to befriend Heather, hoping to make her the next vampire child. Heather also comes across a former high school classmate, Seamus (Paul Morris), who has entered the priesthood and has a surprising interest in cheesy horror films.

Being grade-F cheddar, Vamps: Deadly Dreamgirls would be one of Seamus’ favorite films. It’s fluffy soft-core pornography in the guise of a horror film. The dialogue is so pathetic, you will groan at how intensely cliché it is. As with all bad movies, there are plenty of awful elements beyond the substandard plot. The actors work hard to convey their characters effectively, but fail miserably. The film uses a slate of archaic horror images to set the campy mood, but even Mystery Science Theater 3000 wouldn’t touch this silliness.

Amidst its many weaknesses, the film does have a few stronger points. Co-directors Mark Burchett and Michael D. Fox display at least minimal talent behind the lens, showing an understanding of the use of camera angles and image-screen placement. However, working with an obviously miniscule budget, things don’t look nearly as good as they could. The storyline is also weak, but it at least takes vampire mythology and blends it into a believable representation of the children of the night.

Unfortunately, it’s these little things that make everything else in Vamps: Deadly Dreamgirls stick out as a poor excuse for a movie. The sexploitation style degrades movies in general – a charge that sticks easily when the a movie is so irreparably banal that even fans of soft-core cheese will find themselves hard-pressed to enjoy it.

Review Written

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